"No!" Jack shouted delightedly; "I am glad, Nelly, I am glad. Why, it is just the thing for you; Harry and I have been puzzling our heads all the week as to what you should do!"
"And what did your united wisdom arrive at?" Nelly laughed.
"We thought you might do here at dressmaking," Jack said, "after a bit, you know."
"The thought was not a bad one," she said; "it never occurred to me, and had this great good fortune not have come to me I might perhaps have tried. It was good of you to think of it. And so you never heard a whisper about the schoolmistress? I thought you might perhaps have suggested it somehow, you know you always do suggest things here."
"No, indeed, Nelly, I did not hear Miss Bolton was going."
"I am glad," the girl said.
"Are you?" Jack replied in surprise. "Why, Nelly, wouldn't you have liked me to have helped you?"
"Yes and no, Jack; but no more than yes. I do owe everything to you. It was you who made me your friend, you who taught me, you who urged me on, you who have made me what I am. No, Jack, dear," she said, seeing that Jack looked pained at her thanks; "I have never thanked you before, and I must do it now. I owe everything to you, and in one way I should have been pleased to owe this to you also, but in another way I am pleased not to do so because my gaining it by, if I may say so, my own merits, show that I have done my best to prove worthy of your kindness and friendship."
Tears of earnestness stood in her eyes, and Jack felt that disclaimer would be ungracious.
"I am glad," he said again after a pause. "And now, Miss Hardy," and he touched his hat laughing, "that you have risen in the world, I hope you are not going to take airs upon yourself."